The Case for Human Relationships in the Age of AI
By Dan Cogan-Drew, Co-Founder & CAO, Newsela
I was adopted at birth, and a sense of belonging has always shaped how I understand myself. One of my earliest memories of not belonging came in school when I was pulled from the classroom because I struggled to read. Thankfully, a teacher named Mrs. Schultz intervened,and helped me return to grade level. That experience — being helped back into the room by a person, not a machine — is the lens through which I now view artificial intelligence in education.
Thirteen years ago, my co-founder and I built Newsela on a simple premise: Students of all reading abilities want to stay in the classroom with their peers, and everyone deserves access to more engaging, more authentic content. We bet on teachers, not computers, to lead instruction. That bet looks more important today than ever.
What AI in Education Can’t Replicate
Since AI arrived in classrooms nearly four years ago — not as a solution to a known problem, but as what MIT’s Justin Reich calls an “arrival technology” — much of the industry has chased a vision of AI as an all-knowing tutor, capable of moving any student from the 50th to the 98th percentile. That vision rests on a single, unreplicated 1984 study. I call the belief in it the “closed loop fallacy.” It works reasonably well in narrow, sequenced domains like early literacy or arithmetic, but largely fails in messier, more human ones.
Mike Goldstein, founder of Match Education, has spent years studying what makes tutoring work. Effective tutors know how to get learners to express their understanding, sense when to shift gears, and build authentic rapport. Research shows the strongest results come when humans tutor humans — and when AI is used well, it supports the tutor, not the student directly. Tools like Khanmigo illustrate the gap. Engagement has been limited and interactions have felt, as one parent put it, like asking kids to “do their best for robots” instead of people.
Why Relationships Still Require Human Connection
The more promising path isn’t replacing relationships with AI but preparing students to use it wisely alongside them. Teachers in Newark have developed a “driver’s license” model that shifts students from passive to active AI use.
A sixth-grade teacher I visited in Millburn, New Jersey, has her students document what the AI said, what they agreed with, what they didn’t, and what they’ll do next — slowing down judgment instead of outsourcing it.
Meanwhile, research on teens’ AI chatbot use is telling us something important: kids aren’t turning to AI because they’re lonely. They’re turning to it because they don’t want to burden the people they love. That should worry all of us who care about adolescent development, since it’s human connection — not chatbots — that teaches young people to self-regulate and handle adversity. Until they develop the resourcefulness to reach out to their peers and those around them, the path to belonging will remain significantly harder.
My own path to belonging came not through academics but through sports — ultimate frisbee, specifically, where I met my wife and my future Newsela co-founder. AI may still transform education, especially in how we assess learning. But the deepest, most durable impact on our kids will keep coming from human relationships. Amidst the upheaval precipitated by AI’s arrival in classrooms, let’s not lose sight of this.
About Dan Cogan-Drew
Dan Cogan-Drew is Co-Founder and Chief Academic Officer at Newsela, where he leads learning insights that drive student outcomes. He began his career with Teach for America and has taught in public and private schools and the U.S. Navy. He hosts the podcast AI in the Classroom-Daily and is a two-time world champion ultimate frisbee player. He lives in Maplewood, NJ—the birthplace of ultimate frisbee—where he serves as president of CHS Ultimate, a non-profit devoted to community participation in the sport.
Dan shared these insights at the Sanford Relationship Science Summit on October 1, 2026 in La Jolla. You can learn more about this topic on his podcast.
Podcast: AI in the Classroom-Daily Spotify | Apple | YouTube
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